Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop In the Classroom (scientificamerican.com)

Cindi May writes via Scientific American about new research that "suggests that laptops do not enhance classroom learning, and in fact students would be better off leaving their laptops in the dorm during class." From the report: Although computer use during class may create the illusion of enhanced engagement with course content, it more often reflects engagement with social media, YouTube videos, instant messaging, and other nonacademic content. This self-inflicted distraction comes at a cost, as students are spending up to one-third of valuable (and costly) class time zoned out, and the longer they are online the more their grades tend to suffer. To understand how students are using computers during class and the impact it has on learning, Susan Ravizza and colleagues took the unique approach of asking students to voluntarily login to a proxy server at the start of each class, with the understanding that their internet use (including the sites they visited) would be tracked. Participants were required to login for at least half of the 15 class periods, though they were not required to use the internet in any way once they logged in to the server. Researchers were able to track the internet use and academic performance of 84 students across the semester.

participants spent almost 40 minutes out of every 100-minute class period using the internet for nonacademic purposes, including social media, checking email, shopping, reading the news, chatting, watching videos, and playing games. This nonacademic use was negatively associated with final exam scores, such that students with higher use tended to score lower on the exam. Social media sites were the most-frequently visited sites during class, and importantly these sites, along with online video sites, proved to be the most disruptive with respect to academic outcomes. In contrast with their heavy nonacademic internet use, students spent less than 5 minutes on average using the internet for class-related purposes (e.g., accessing the syllabus, reviewing course-related slides or supplemental materials, searching for content related to the lecture). Given the relatively small amount of time students spent on academic internet use, it is not surprising that academic internet use was unrelated to course performance. Thus students who brought their laptops to class to view online course-related materials did not actually spend much time doing so, and furthermore showed no benefit of having access to those materials in class.

Comments

Strawman defeated

[mcmonkey]

Although computer use during class may create the illusion of enhanced engagement with course content, it more often reflects engagement with social media

Other than businesses wanting to sell more laptop computers or students wanting to surf the web during class, who ever claimed computer use during a lecture or seminar would enhance engagement with course content?

Re: But what about my porn needs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point, if a laptop can get masturbation times to 5-10 minutes instead of 20, it's well worth it. No one wants to sit next to someone masturbating for 20+ minutes.

Crutches prevent learning to walk

[sjbe]

Other than businesses wanting to sell more laptop computers or students wanting to surf the web during class, who ever claimed computer use during a lecture or seminar would enhance engagement with course content?

FAR too many people think it will help. In some cases it can but the problem is that people think these cases generalize more than they actually do. It's just a modern day version of letting students use a fancy calculator as a crutch to get answers rather than having to do the heavy lifting to actually learn from first principles and gain the intuition that results.

Plus for too many students the computer is just a HUGE distraction. Why would a kid pay attention to a boring history or math class when they could be doing something fun on social media?

Re:Crutches prevent learning to walk

[perpenso]

Then, in a more slow fashion, write down only the important things, in summary, rather than try to create a verbatim transcript. :-) The act of paying enough attention so you can summarize helps in the learning process. The act of typing a verbatim transcript offers little learning, you can sort of zone out merely recognizing words without context and typing.

Start the noise!

[ebonum]

I'm sure some billion dollar social media companies will be able to quietly cast doubt on these "absurd" and "backward" conclusions.

Laptops? Or the internet.

[Cimexus]

Sounds to me like the problem is having an internet connection in class rather than laptops themselves, since the findings focus on time wasted on social media, shopping, other non-academic uses. I used a laptop in class in the late 90s/early 2000s for taking notes on, instead of on paper, but it wasn't really a distraction because there was no internet connection (Wifi wasn't ubiquitous in classrooms back then). It was just the way I took notes.

Nothing more obvious

[SmaryJerry]

This is too obvious to former students. It's college though, like the real world if you don't put effort in and fail it is your own fault and your own money and time you are wasting, unless you are a socialist getting college for free.

This Just In!

[Notabadguy]

Students with self-discipline and an interest in academic success perform better than students without self-discipline!

Here's an interesting anecdote as a West Point alumni - cadets all had computers starting in the very late 90s. In 2001, USMA switched from issuing towers to issuing laptops, which cadets took to class. The laptops took the place of hand-written notes (of which everyone was expected to keep volumes), and paper lab books (of which there were many - and costly).

They worked fine. There was also disciplinary action if caught using your laptop during class for non-class related work. Then again, West Point is extremely academically rigorous, and you get kicked out if your GPA drops too low.

Point being - half the kids in college are just there because that's what they were supposed to do next - they're not trying to better themselves, so given a chance to fuck around, they're going to entertain themselves. There's a lack of discipline. If people want to see college kids performing better at academic pursuits, then colleges are going to have to invest in some.

Hard to beat pen and paper

[Tomahawk]

When I went back to do my Masters, I didn't use any technology in the classroom. Instead, I printed out a copy of all of the lecture notes (the lecturers made them all available to download) and brought them with me with a pencil. I was then able to follow the notes along with the lecturer and make any additional notes I needed in the margins, highlight passages, etc.

I found this worked very well for me. I knew any sort of tech in my hand would lead me to being distracted (as it always the case when sent on courses for work), so I kept it simple and old school.

Sometimes these ways are the best. Technology is great it many many areas of life, but there are some areas where the lack of it can be more beneficial - lectures being one.

(One lecturer would actually tell anyone with a laptop or tablet out to put it away in their bags!)

Schools just do "tech" to be cool

[furry_wookie]

Frankly, I see ZERO use for students to have cellphones, laptops, or tablets in school.

There is nothing they need to do that can not be done better with paper, and just having a few computers available in the room for research etc.

Constant possession of devices is NOTHING but a huge distraction in the classroom and contributes to the sick addiction behaviors I see in nearly an entire generation.

Not to mention that many schools put these devices in the hands of children and have no clue how to manage or police their use to only appropriate purposes.

The rush to add tables,laptops etc into classrooms is one of the biggest mistakes in educational history.